Urban Design Archives | Page 2 of 2

thomas phifer’s arched wagner pavilion signals flood-resiliency for lower manhattan

wagner park and pavilion opens in battery park city

Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park and Pavilion is a new waterfront landscape and civic structure in New York‘s Battery Park City designed by Thomas Phifer and Partnerswith AECOM.

Set along the southern edge of Lower Manhattan, the project reimagines a familiar public space as an elevated terrain shaped by coastal protection and long views across the harbor.

The work forms a central component of the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project, where flood defense is designed as civic infrastructure. The park rises nearly ten feet above its previous elevation in a calibrated shift that responds to projections for future storms and rising sea levels, all while preserving public access to the water’s edge.

images © Scott Frances

an ascending landscape as resilient infrastructure

Visitors and residents of New York’s Battery Park City approach the new Wagner Pavilion through gently sloping gardens dotted with trees and plantings. The gradual ascent creates a slow reveal of the vast waterfront, with footpaths oriented to maintain sightlines toward the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

The elevated landscape conceals a continuous flood protection system beneath lawns and planting beds. A sheet pile floodwall is driven to bedrock below the central lawn, linking to exposed segments that connect with defenses to the north and south. The team at AECOM and the architects at Thomas Phifer and Partners embed this infrastructure within the park’s topography so that public space remains at once uninterrupted and protected from rising water levels.

the Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park reshapes the southern edge of Battery Park City

design informed by stormwater strategies

The organization of Wagner Park follows the legacy layout of lawns, gardens, and pavilion spaces, translated into resilient a new section of Battery Park City. The surface reads as a vast green plane, yet its grading guides stormwater toward planted areas and filtration zones with precision. This balance between openness and performance defines much of the park’s character.

Stormwater strategies are split across wet and dry sides of the flood line. On the water-facing side, rain moves through performative gardens and into an underground infiltration gallery before releasing gradually into the soil. Landward areas channel water to a reuse cistern for irrigation and maintenance. Materials reinforce this system, with high albedo pavers, pervious surfaces, and salvaged stone and wood contributing to durability and environmental performance.

flood protection infrastructure is embedded beneath lawns to preserve open waterfront access

Ecology at the Water’s Edge

Along the harbor, the park introduces a living shoreline that supports habitat and public education. Terraced edges, habitat shelves, and tide pools create varied conditions for native plantings and marine life, while engineered pile wraps and textured concrete expand surfaces for invertebrates. A marine habitat education zone near Pier A brings these systems into view, linking ecological processes with everyday experience.

Planting across the site emphasizes seasonal change and regional ecologies, from tidal estuary to upland woodland. Path widths are kept tight to increase green coverage, and tree canopies temper summer heat with shade and filtered light. The park has earned Gold certification under the Waterfront Alliance’s Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines, reflecting an integrated approach to resilience, ecology, and access.

the Wagner Pavilion marks the transition between city, park, and water

the sculpted pavilion by thomas phifer and partners

Approaching from within the park, the Wagner Pavilion appears as a low, sculpted form aligned with the terrain. Its deep red concrete carries a warmth that resonates with nearby historic masonry, including Castle Clinton and other harbor fortifications. A sequence of arched vaults defines the entry piazza, framing the passage from garden to open harbor.

Moving through the central vault, the landscape opens toward the water, with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island precisely framed. The pavilion acts as a threshold rather than a destination alone, marking the transition between city, park, and harbor. Access from the esplanade below is equally considered, with ramps and stairs offering multiple paths upward.

warm red concrete vaults frame views toward the Statue of Liberty

inside new york’s wagner pavilion

Inside, the Wagner Pavilion accommodates a restaurant and a classroom, extending the park’s public life into sheltered spaces. Outdoor seating spills into the piazza, encouraging overlap between interior activity and the surrounding gardens. Circulation continues upward via broad stairs and an elevator to an observation deck that offers panoramic views across New York Harbor, The Battery, and inland toward downtown Manhattan.

The roof edge is softened by planting that echoes nearby landscapes. Curved walls mirror the contours of the park, reinforcing a sense of continuity between building and landscape. Within the broader framework of Battery Park City, the pavilion reads as a carefully tuned civic room shaped by its resilient and enduring relationship with the waterfront.

HKS releases first design of colonnaded Washington Commanders Stadium

Ben Dreith

Architecture studio HKS and NFL team the Washington Commanders have revealed images of a “monumental” stadium wrapped in a colonnade, set to be built in Washington, DC.

With a capacity of more than 70,000, the Washington Commanders Stadium at the RFK Campus was designed by HKS to be monumental, both in its sheer size and impact on the Washington DC skyline.

It will be wrapped in a white colonnade that recalls the city’s civic monuments including the Lincoln Memorial.

According to the team, it was designed with respect to the layout of Washington DC – known as the L’Enfant Plan – with deference to the Capitol Building and the RFK Stadium that is currently on the site.

“Every design decision is guided by the significance of place – shaped by its local, regional and national history and generations of memories rooted in RFK Stadium,” said HKS global venues director Mark A Williams.

“Monumental in presence, grounded in the L’Enfant Plan and scaled to the urban fabric of the district, the stadium design will be a bold civic landmark that carries the city’s architectural legacy forward in a way that is confident, dynamic and unmistakably Washington, DC.”

Positioned on a roundabout interchange adjacent to the Anacostia River and the parklands of the RFK Campus, the stadium will have a cable-net, anti-clastic glass roofing system.

The shape of the roof “establishes a dynamic yet respectful profile rising to welcome visitors from the north and south while maintaining a lower presence along the east–west axis in deference to the US Capitol and monuments,” according to HKS.

The sleek column system will stand in front of large expanses of glass. Around the roofline, the columns will intersect with a massive bezel-like form that lines the rim of the bowl. The columns will be most likely be made from coloured concrete.

Renderings show a potential lantern-like effect at night, given the large amounts of glass used for the facade treatment.

At the primary entry points on the east and west side, the bowl will dip down to compress a wide glass-fronted entryway. Within the stadium, the field will be sunk meaning visitors enter at a higher plane, similar to Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

This entrance will sit on a plinth, reminiscent of other civic buildings in Washington DC.

Hardscape surrounding the stadium will allow for pre-game gatherings and other public events, and the renderings show millions of square feet of development, laid out to adhere to the Perkins Eastman masterplan of the RFK campus, which connects to the river.

The stadium design has been highly anticipated. Though the Washington Commanders stopped using RFK in the late 1990s, other sports such as football, baseball and collegiate American football were played there through the 2010s, with the George Dahl-designed stadium going out of commission in 2019.

It is currently being gradually disassembled.

RFK’s site has been contentious given the multiple jurisdictions in Washington DC. However, last year, the property moved from being administered by the National Parks Service to the local government, which leased out the land to the Commanders and approved the development plans late last year.

Due to its proximity to the capital, the design has also been the subject of national debate. The Donald Trump-appointed chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the commission that oversees buildings in the Capital Region, suggested that the stadium should be “classical” at a meeting in December.

A source close to the project said that the decision to have the collonades on the stadium occurred well before these comments, and that the Washington Commanders’ management and architects will work with the NCPC, which has an advisory but not approbative say in the matter.

The renderings suggest an integration of both classical and contemporary elements in the design.

Washington Commanders president Mark Clouse emphasised the focus on football in his statement on the design release, as well as the importance of the structure to the wider community. Community engagement processes requesting feedback for the design are ongoing.

“We’re designing a stadium that amplifies the energy of football, supports year-round events and becomes a place the community can be proud of,” said Clouse. “We look forward to hearing feedback from our community as the design continues to evolve.”

Washington DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser emphasised the proximity to public transport, as well as the job creation attendant to the project.

“These renderings give DC a lot to look forward to – a beautiful and unique waterfront stadium and the return of our Commanders; year-round events that are steps away from an entertainment district and public transportation,” said Bowser.

The Washington Commanders will continue to play at their current stadium in the adjacent state of Maryland until the Washington Commanders Stadium at the RFK Campus opens around 2030.

HKS has designed other NFL stadiums, including SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and is also working with the Cleveland Browns team for its new stadium.

A New Plan For The H Street Corridor

A plan is in the works to give a boost to the struggling H Street Corridor.

DC’s Office of Planning (OP) along with the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development has picked architecture firm Torti Gallas to conduct a land use and market study for the corridor that saw a huge development boom between 2010 and 2018.

The study will focus on the stretch between 3rd Street NE and 15th Street NE, examining market trends and the possibility for more development and public realm improvements. Torti Gallas will be tasked with “creating an economic development strategy that promotes a vibrant mix of retail and housing while enhancing the pedestrian experience along this significant transit corridor,” according to OP.

The H Street Corridor has encountered significant headwinds in the post-pandemic world. A 2023 article in the Washington Post outlined how increased crime in the area was resulting in a sense of unease among residents, and a number of neighborhood establishments closed as a result. The streetcar, that opened to significant fanfare in 2016, will shut down at the end of March.

Wishing You Joy and Success in 2026 from edESTESdesign

Happy New Year 2026 from edESTESdesign! We wish everyone a year filled with creativity, inspiration, and success. May this new year bring you joy and new opportunities to shine. Cheers to a fantastic year ahead!

Can Saudi Arabia still complete The LINE?

IN THE south west corner of the Arabian desert, an enormous trench has been formed. It may look like it was carved out by an alien presence but it is in fact evidence that one of the most ambitious construction projects in history is steaming ahead.

The 200-metre wide trench runs from the Hejaz mountains across to the Gulf of Aqaba. As if that wasn’t enough, a small portion of it contains the start of what will be the biggest set of foundations ever built. Once that concrete has set, the first vertical structures will begin to emerge.

This incredible hive of activity is in fact the construction site of The LINE, Saudi Arabia’s wildly ambitious megacity in the desert. To put it another way, the thing everybody said would or could never be built is actually being built.

Above: Satellite imagery showing construction of The LINE Image: Google.

Or is it? Because for every sign of progress, rumours swirl of scalebacks, insurmountable budget blowouts and mass lay offs. There are even rumours swirling that the whole thing has been cancelled. But what we actually know for sure is much more limited.

2026 will be make or break for The LINE. This is where deadlines need to be met and progress will be measured in height, not hype. Regardless of what you think of this mind boggling project, there’s a country with its future invested in it and a leader whose reputation is staked on it.

So, the trillion dollar question: will it ever be built?

Let’s start with the basics. The LINE is Saudi Arabia’s plan for a 170-kilometre linear city, rising to a consistent height of 500-metres. When it’s complete, it’ll form the capital city of NEOM, a vast new region in the country’s northwest, dreamed up by the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. NEOM, in turn, forms a key pillar of Vision 2030, a countrywide plan to transition the Saudi economy away from oil dependency by 2030.

Above: An early render of The Line. Image: NEOM.

How is it being built? The initial challenge for any projector of this scale is geology. The LINE crosses wildly varying terrain: hard mountain rock, soft open desert, and salty coastal plains. To build anything across such varied land, you first need a uniform, stable footing.

That’s where foundations come in. The LINE will rest on a subterranean structure known as a piled raft foundation. The “piles” are sunk deep into the earth, along the Line’s footprint. These cylinders of reinforced concrete bypass soft, unstable strata of earth and rest upon the hard bedrock below. The flat concrete “raft” lays on top of these piles and creates a flat, uniform platform to build on.

To pull this off, an automated factory is churning out 32-metre long rebar cages, used to mould and reinforce each pile. Meanwhile, drilling rigs use GPS to precisely bore the holes these rebar cages will be dropped into. A biodegradable liquid is pumped into the holes to stop them from collapsing before concrete can be poured in.

But it’s not just soft earth engineers have to grapple with. Being so close to the sea, this stretch also needs protecting from the highly saline ground water. Left untreated this could rust the steel cages and over time corrode the concrete piles.

To solve this, the world’s largest de-watering system was created. 500 wells were drilled along a stretch of The LINE, each equipped with a water pump at its base. Water is pumped out at a rate of 90,000-cubic metres per hour towards a settlement pond where the quality of the liquid is checked. From there, the water is filtered and pumped out to sea in a series of discharge pipes.

Work on the foundations for phase one is nearly complete which means the project is about to enter its next milestone: going vertical.

On a typical skyscraper, that means building the core. If you’ve ever walked past a construction site, you’ll have seen these go up, they’re not very attractive, but they’re critical to how a skyscraper works. It’s essentially the backbone of the building, and it’s formed by pouring concrete into a mould that gets pushed up by hydraulic jacks.

Above: A typical skyscraper core under construction.

But with The LINE, there’s a twist. Because it’s a city, not a building, it won’t have a 170-kilometre long core that everything sits inside. Instead, it will feature thousands of cores. These will be developed features in their own right but crucially, they will also support a series of decks.

Imagine taking Manhattan’s grid, folding it up and stacking it vertically. These decks are the city’s avenues and the cores are the streets linking each one. This is where the city will come to life. On these decks you’ll find schools, housing, transport, everything you need to make a city function.

Phase one will see 4.8-million tonnes of steel outrigger beams hoisted up to support five decks running through each. Usually on skyscrapers, the steel frame and cladding start to be added before the core is finished. That’s potentially why 2026 could be a huge year for The LINE, because it’s the first stage we can expect to see fast progress.

Above: Steelwork outrigger beams are expected to be installed on The Line’s cores

Tech firm buys 10-acre Downtown Atlanta site for potential $3.8B project

By Henry Queen – Staff Reporter, Atlanta Business Chronicle

Ten acres in the heart of Downtown Atlanta have sold to a company that envisions an eye-catching project on property that is no stranger to ambitious proposals.

Webstar Technology Group on Wednesday said it closed on the site at the corner of Ted Turner Drive SW and Whitehall Street SW in the Castleberry Hill area. The price was not disclosed, and a deed for the sale has not yet been recorded. Previous financial disclosures said the sale was valued at $33 million.

David Branch and Peyton Stinson with SSG Realty Partners represented the seller, McCall Railroad LLC. Jae Kim with CBRE represented the buyer, a subsidiary of Webstar called Forge Atlanta Asset Management. The firm has said it will sell cryptocurrency tokens to help finance the project. That would not “replace traditional financing, but rather adds a new, carefully structured opportunity,” per the company.

“Closing on the land for Forge Atlanta marks a major milestone in our vision to transform an under‑utilized industrial block into a vibrant, mixed‑use district,” Webstar Technology Group CEO Ricardo Haynes said in a statement. “By integrating traditional real estate financing with compliant blockchain technology, we are opening the door for residents, investors and communities to participate in Atlanta’s growth.”

In 2021, Urbantec Development Partners proposed a life science research hub for the site — a plan that fizzled two years later. Kim, a vice president at CBRE, led that company and still has a small stake in the new Forge Atlanta project.

Webstar, a public company, is valued at roughly a penny on OTC Markets, though it has inched up in recent days. As of Sept. 30, Webstar had $7,789 in cash and a little over $600,000 in total assets — most of which were related to this real estate project, according to a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Phase 1 of Forge Atlanta, as this project has been dubbed, would include a 300‑key hotel, approximately 600 residential condominiums, and about 60,500 square feet of retail and entertainment space, according to a news release. About 1,600 parking spaces are also planned. The condos are expected to be priced from $750,000 to $2.4 million.

SSG listing — The 10-acre Downtown Atlanta site that sold on Dec. 17 is highlighted in yellow.

A September feasibility study from CBRE and Turner and Townsend said the overall plan is to build 950 hotel rooms, over 2,300 condo units, two 300,000-square-foot office buildings, two 100,000-square-foot data centers, two 40,000-square-foot conference centers, a 50,000-square-foot entertainment center and more.

Across all phases, there may be more than 8.5 million square feet of development, carrying a cost of $3.77 billion, according to the feasibility study. Ernst & Young and Develop Fulton projected the full project would create 3,000 jobs (construction and permanent) and generate an economic impact of over $7 billion, Webstar said.

It’s a staggering proposal that raises some questions. Bisnow reported in July that Webstar has left behind a trail of red flags, including nonexistent permits, collapsed land deals and unverifiable resumes.

Some elements of the project may be difficult to execute. In 2024, the city of Atlanta banned new data center development within a half-mile of MARTA stations, and the Forge property is within that distance from MARTA’s Garnett station. Condo development in Atlanta has been limited in the near two decades since the Great Recession. New office construction has plummeted since the pandemic.

Plus, Downtown Atlanta does not typically attract projects of this scale meant to make a profit. The ongoing $5 billion Centennial Yards development is supported by up to $1.9 billion in public financing, which was approved by Atlanta City Council in 2018.

Meanwhile, the nearby revitalization of historic buildings in South Downtown is made possible because of tech entrepreneur David Cummings’ investment, bolstered by proceeds from the growth and eventual sales of his former startups. The project does not need to hit a certain internal rate of return to pay investors or lenders.

“We’re not competing to get IRR returns to go sell the buildings,” SoDo Atlanta LLC CEO Jon Birdsong, Cummings’ business partner, recently told Cushman & Wakefield’s Tim Wright on the Sunbelt Developers podcast.

Develop Fulton did recently advance a public financing plan for the first phase of the Forge Atlanta project. The authority’s board of directors voted in October to approve a $223.7 million bond inducement resolution, resulting in approximately $9.7 million in tax savings over 10 years for Webstar.

A public commenter during the Develop Fulton meeting raised questions about the accuracy of Webstar’s presentation and criticized the company’s lack of public engagement.

In its Dec. 17 news release, Webstar committed to hosting community meetings, workforce development programs and cultural events starting in 2026.

According to the news release, other companies involved in the project include:

Turner & Townsend will provide development management.
Skanska has participated in preliminary discussions and pre-construction planning as a potential general contractor, subject to the negotiation.
Skyline Engineering will provide in‑house oversight and quality control.
Kimley-Horn will serve as the lead engineer.
Nelson Worldwide will lead design.

A ceremonial groundbreaking is projected for mid-2026, and construction of the first phase is expected to last up to three years.

Season’s Greetings: A Year of Creativity and Collaboration

As we celebrate this festive season, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude for your continued support and collaboration throughout the year.

In this past year, I have had the pleasure of working on innovative architectural designs, thoughtful urban planning projects, creative graphic designs, and dynamic web solutions—all made possible by your trust in me.

May this Christmas bring you peace, joy, and wonderful moments with your loved ones. I look forward to continuing our partnership in the New Year and bringing your visions to life.

Ed Estes
Principal
edESTESdesign

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!